Dawn of the Lost World: The Site B Story
We all know that InGen created their Site B facility to raise the dinosaurs until they were old enough to be shipped off to the park, and we all know that when the park failed, the employees on Site B had to evacuate. However, as you will learn in this story, there was something much more dangerous and sinister going on around Site B prior to Jurassic Park's failure. And no, I'm not talking about dinosaurs breaking out and raising hell on the island. Of course, that happens too at some point, but I'm talking about a much, much bigger disaster. You're in for quite a ride, so "hold on to your butts". Prologue John Hammond stared into one of the dinosaur pens, with Peter Ludlow standing by his side. A single Metriacanthosaurus paced back and forth inside. Hammond sighed, and looked at Henry Wu, who was standing directly behind him. "This dinosaur isn't looking so good, Henry. You might have to remove Metriacanthosaurus from the park list". "Nonsense, sir", said Henry. "This is common among predators in captivity. Once we move him to the park he should snap right out of it.", "I hope you're right", answered Hammond. "Don't worry sir, I guarantee that the park is going to be an absolute success", reassured Wu. Hammond sighed again and moved toward another pen with a pair of Suchomimus inside it. It was 1986, and the park was scheduled to open in only a matter of years. He couldn't afford a delay in opening, he was not getting any younger, already nearing his mid-70s, and he feared he would not live to see the joy in the faces of his very first visitors at seeing their childhood heroes living and breathing, seemingly having leapt straight from their imaginations and now emerging into the light of reality. Hammond continued staring at the Suchomimus. They seemed more active and healthy. They were playfully chasing each other around the pen, sometimes tackling each other in mock fights. However, the dinosaurs were still juvenile, and Hammond knew that when they neared adulthood, their playfullness would fade into bloodthirsty aggression, their playful tackles transforming into brutal fights. They were already in early adolescence, and it would be only several months before they would start to turn on each other. The employees on Site B would have to separate them before then. Hammond then exited the little zoo where the dinosaurs were temporarily kept and headed toward the Ranger Station to see how things were with Muldoon, who worked on Site B before the dinosaurs started being moved to the park. Chapter 1 "So, what's new Bob", Hammond asked Robert Muldoon as he walked into the Ranger Station. "Nothing much", said Muldoon. "Henry tells me he and the other geneticists have uncovered amber with some kind of fly in it. The amber dates roughly to the Mid-Cretaceous, so there is potentially dinosaur blood in it. We don't know whether or not the fly WAS even a bloodsucker, but we won't know until we try." "Marvelous!", replied Hammond. "I was thinking of making the first shipment of raptors to Nublar. Do you think you could arrange that?". "Well, OK, you're the boss after all. I'll take it up with the other rangers. But remember that the raptors are enough of a handful here, and we might want to wait a little while longer before having to worry about them on TWO islands". Hammond, who didn't give much thought into any decision, simply ignored Muldoon's warning and told him to take it up with the rangers as soon as he could. "I look forward to hearing from you later about it", said Hammond, and with that he walked out of the station. Chapter 2 Muldoon walked into the meeting room and sat down at the head of the table. "Hammond wants to have our first eight raptors transferred to Nublar", he said. "I tried to tell him that it was suicide, but you know Hammond, there's no use arguing with that man". "We're just finishing construction on Velociraptor Valley", said one of the workers. "But we've also prepared a backup quarantine pen should the dinosaurs prove too difficult to handle in their full-sized paddock". "Oh, no one told me about the quarantine pen. Maybe this won't be so bad after all". No one could have predicted how wrong Muldoon would be about that statement. "We should have them ready to be shipped by next week", said another worker. Suddenly, Muldoon heard one of the raptors scream from their nearby pen, and he shuddered at the sound. Muldoon had always had a bad feeling about the raptors. He really thought they should be completely eliminated from the park plans. But ignorant John Hammond wanted everything to go as planned. He wanted every dinosaur InGen had created to eventually end up in the park. Muldoon seemed to be the only employee on the island concerned about the fate of Hammond's little island paradise. The only employee who was able to see the flaws in his dream. That man seemed to think he was God, he thought he had perfect control of nature. Hammond thought he could introduce creatures that were made to live in a long-gone world into the present without any consequences. "Muldoon, are you all right", asked an employee, noticing that the man was very quiet. "I'm fine, just get those raptors prepared for shipping", he said. Suddenly, Muldoon heard a bloodcurdling scream. Not a dinosaur scream, but a human scream. It was a human shriek of pain and terror. Muldoon snapped up from his seat and ran out the door. Chapter 3 Muldoon dashed into the zoo and ran up to the raptor pen. Through the tall chain-link fence, he could see two of the raptors feeding on a strange dark figure. With horror, Muldoon suddenly realized that the figure was a human body. "What the hell happened here?", shouted Muldoon. A worker quickly answered. "While we were feeding the raptors, they bumped the crane and the operator fell right into the pit!". "This is awful!", cried Muldoon. "What will the board think about this?". "They won't be happy, and I bet we'll be receiving a lawsuit from that worker's relatives". This was the first in what would become a long chain of worker deaths. No one had any idea how out of hand this would get. Though only a minor mishap now, this would turn into a complete disaster. And still, even worse events were underway. Muldoon walked away in disgust, trying not to gag. Chapter 4 Lewis Dodgson approached the table in the boardroom and sat down at the front. "I know I have not yet told you why I've gathered you all here today, but I'll tell you now". Dodgson pointed to the Biosyn symbol on the wall and said "As you know, our company is going downhill. There's a growing consensus among tree-hugging hippies that animal testing is cruel and unjust.". Biosyn's products largely required animal testing, and there had been a great deal of protest toward his company in recent years. "But what if we created our own animals specifically for testing. Particularly, an extinct animal!". "What the hell are you talking about, Lew?", someone asked. "I'm talking about InGen. They've begun work on a little petting zoo on an island off the coast of the Dominican. This zoo is built to contain dinosaurs". "Yeah, right!", someone else said. "I'm telling the truth. InGen has uncovered techniques for reconstructing dinosaur DNA, and they want to use these for creating some kind of tourist attraction. Crazy, I know. But it's true". "Alright, Lew. I guess we'll buy this little story of yours", said someone. "But where do we come in on this". "What if we were to, say, acquire some dinosaur DNA of our own", answered Dodgson. "An extinct animal is for all intentional purposes already dead, it has no rights. We could do whatever we want with it, and no one would give a shit.". "I think you're on to something", said the man sitting next to Dodgson. "But how are we to acquire InGen's dinosaur DNA". "We aren't, but I know just the guy who is. Two guys, actually, but one is simply Plan B and hopefully we won't have to use him.". Dodgson went on with his plan. "Plan A is Miles Chadwick. I've hired this man to sneak onto Isla Sorna, the island where InGen is currently raising their dinosaurs, and steal InGen's primary source of dinosaur DNA. If he fails his mission, Plan B is Dennis Nedry. There is a second stash of dinosaur embryos on Isla Nublar, the place where the park is planned to be located. If we have to, we'll send Nedry there and have him do basically the same thing". "That sounds like a reliable plan", said the guy sitting beside Dodgson again. "When do you intend to put this plan into action". "As soon as the first dinosaurs are shipped to Nublar. That way more employees will be sent there to look after the dinosaurs, and there will be fewer employees on Sorna to stop me." The clock struck two, the meeting was over. Dodgson, having explained his plan, got up from his chair and lef the room. Chapter 5 "So, what are you going to tell the board about the accident?", asked Peter Ludlow as he and Hammond neared the employee village quarters. "Relax", said Hammond. "I'm a natural at bribing these people. All I need to do is bring a few thousand dollars in my wallet and they'll forget the whole thing ever happened". "Still, there hasn't been an accident quite as severe as this one before". Hammond sighed, he really didn't want to talk about this at the moment. He just wanted to spend the remainder of the evening in his quarters. It had been a long and somewhat frightening day, and all he asked was a little time to eat his dinner, maybe watch a bit of television, and then go to bed. Things would be better in the morning, he was sure. "Well, good night", said Ludlow as he neared his quarters. "Good night, Pete", answered Hammond, and then he headed off to his own quarters. Suddenly, Hammond heard a dinosaur roar, and it sounded too close to have emerged from the throat of a dinosaur locked up in the zoo. This could only mean one thing. A dinosaur, and by the pitch of the roar he guessed a large one, had escaped. Chapter 6 At the edge of the village quarters, Hammond saw a Tarbosaurus thundering around, devouring worker after worker. As it ate the workers, it crushed others beneath its massive feet. Suddenly, Muldoon leapt onto the scene. He raised his rifle and started repeatedly shooting the dinosaur. "NO! BOB! PLEASE STOP!", Hammond was screaming at the top of his lungs as blood gushed from hideous wounds across the dinosaur's body. Finally, the dinosaur collapsed, smothering several workers in the process. Hammond shrieked in grief for the fallen dinosaur as if it were his own child. The remaining workers fled in mortal terror. "Don't worry, she's breathing", Muldoon reassured. "What the hell! You almost killed it!" "What was I supposed to do? She was snapping up workers like they were popcorn and I didn't have any tranq weapons!". "Still, you didn't have to...", Hammond stopped midsentence. "Don't you have an emergency cage in the Ranger Station". "Yes, why?". "Could you keep her there until her pen is repaired?" "I suppose, but what about her wounds. We can't just leave her with those. It would be more merciful if we just left her here to die." "I'll have Dr. Harding check up on her. She should be healthy again in no time" "Alright, then. I suppose we could keep her there. Just make sure you get Harding on it as soon as possible. I don't want this monster disrupting our meetings with her moans of pain". "I'll contact him first thing in the morning", said Hammond. He then walked back toward his quarters, treating what had been a mass murder as a small incident. Chapter 7 Screamer The Velociraptor opened her eyes. She looked around her pen, it was light out, which she knew meant it was daytime. She cried a wakeup call to the other raptors. One of them, Scarface (named for the distinctive scar across her right eye that she got in a fight with Dusk, the pack leader), approached Screamer and nudged her, but Screamer hissed and lashed out with her tail, blowing Scarface back. Scarface backed into the ferns in fear. Scarface not touch Screamer, thought Screamer to herself. For whatever the reasons, Scarface's eye scar provoked distrust of her in Screamer. Screamer noticed the fence at the front of her pen and jumped on it. She recieved a shock and fell back to the ground. Screamer hurt whenever touch fence, no climb fence, thought Screamer. But maybe Screamer dig under fence. Screamer stretched her claws and started pawing at the ground. Before long she created a hole roughly two feet deep, and peered into it, only to bump her snout on concrete. She yelped in pain and pulled her head above ground. The fence was deeper than she expected. Screamer dug a bit deeper and stuck her head in again. This time, nothing happened. She continued to dig until she scraped a patch of dirt with her claws and a bright hole opened up above her. She climbed out and saw that that she was outside the fence. Screamer ran into the dense jungle, with no barriers to stop her. Notes *When I started this story I was not yet a registered user, but I am now, so don't delete my edits thinking I'm a different person adding my own bits and pieces to "someone else's" story. *For the sake of the story's continuity, I may re-use some images, so don't be surprised if you see the same pictures multiple times. *If you're wondering who Miles Chadwick is, he was an antagonist in Jurassic Park: The Game, but they didn't say anything about him being a "Plan A" to Nedry in the game, that aspect is purely an invention of my creative license. *Some chapters in this book are told from the point of view of the raptors *I'm planning to write a sequel to this story once it is finished, but I won't give away any spoilers, as even I am still brainstorming what the sequel will be about, so you'll just have to wait till I finish this story and get to writing the next one.